Start a Home Service Business
Around Your Day Job

The trades that fit a day job share two traits: the work can happen on Saturday, and the customer can wait a few hours for a callback. Pressure washing, Christmas light installation, junk removal, lawn care, handyman work and house cleaning all pass. Plumbing and HVAC do not, because the caller with a burst pipe needs an answer at 2 pm. Locksmith and garage door work require Google Ads Advanced Verification in the US, which is a poor fit for a first side business.

It depends on the trade. Jobber Academy's published figures put a minimum viable pressure washing setup at $2,000 to $6,000 and a Christmas light business at $1,940 to $2,715, in both cases before a vehicle. Junk removal and lawn care mostly need a truck or trailer you may already own. A pay-per-lead side business needs no equipment but should budget $600 to $2,000 for a first month of ads that commonly loses money while the campaign is tuned.

Pick trades where a callback can wait, then build a system: a voicemail that names a callback time, a 20-minute lunch block and a 6 pm block for callbacks, texting back by hand within minutes, quoting by photo at night, and an ad schedule that only shows your ads during hours you can pick up. A 2007 MIT and InsideSales study found the odds of qualifying a lead drop 21 times between a 5-minute and a 30-minute callback, which is why the callback system comes before any ad spend.

After ten customers and ten reviews, and only if a Saturday has holes that Marketplace, Nextdoor and referrals are not filling. Start at $10 a day with call ads, a tight service area, negative keywords from day one, and an ad schedule limited to hours you can call back. Pressure washing clicks average about $7 and Christmas light clicks about $8 in the benchmark data we track, so $300 a month is roughly 40 clicks and three to four leads at the calculator's 8 percent assumption.

Yes, and it fits a day job because the homeowner's call rings the contractor's phone, not yours. Sign three contractor buyers in the evenings before spending on ads, run a $20-a-day campaign with call ads and a tracking number, review search terms on Friday nights, listen to recorded calls on Tuesdays, and send a weekly lead invoice on Sundays. Google bars lead-generation businesses from lead form ads, its Advanced Verification policy for locksmith and garage door requires aggregators and lead-generation networks to show a typical price range in the top 20 percent of the page, and the TCPA governs automated calls and texts, so the cleanest structure is live calls you forward, with a plain disclosure on the page.

Yes, in a trade your business is allowed to sell, and only if you treat your LLC as the contractor it is. When your LLC takes the job, sets the price and gets paid, the licensing rules in many states reach your LLC, not only the company doing the work: California's Business and Professions Code 7026 counts anyone who does the work "by or through others" as a contractor, Florida, Arizona and Nevada word their laws similarly, and you should not count on a subcontractor's license to cover your LLC; in many states it doesn't. That rules out heavily licensed trades such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC and pest control unless your LLC holds the license itself, and leaves trades many states do not license, such as house cleaning, window cleaning or junk removal, though rules vary by state and city. Google also requires Advanced Verification for locksmith and garage door ads. Subcontract to real businesses with their own insurance, tools and other customers, under a written agreement, with your LLC named as an additional insured on their liability policy by endorsement (a certificate of insurance alone does not do that), because individual workers you direct can count as your employees. And you answer the phone: every lead calls your LLC, so the callback is where the sale happens. This is not legal advice; check your state licensing board and city, and ask a local lawyer before you sign customer contracts.